A passionate cook and foodie, I love spending time in my kitchen..... Listed here are a series of my tried and tested recipes learnt from family and elsewhere. They are very easy to do and simple with ingredients readily available at any kitchen......

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Wednesday, 12 July 2017

MATAR PINEAPPLE RICE WITH CARROT N TOMATO SALAD

If you think my men have turned obedient all of a sudden and started having salads with every meal, you are utterly wrong. The salad is for me, there definitely had some scrumptious mutton or chicken curry or a baked fish kind of thing with this Matar Pineapple Rice with a desi touch. Some people always say S you must incorporate salads and soups and stews in your family diet knowing how difficult it is to handle my men. My boys' healthy eating is limited to chicken, mutton or fish stew that too accompanied by anda paratha or aloo paratha or luchi / poori / naan. They love their rice only when it is fried with meat or egg, that is when I get to play some trick and add some veggies to it. I was clearly told some 25 years back ..... do not ever try to control my life, I love my freedom neither will I try to control yours. He does not ever try to either. That is where the equation is and there is no reason why I will not cook what they love. I always try to feed a bit of that extra morsel to my chopsticks. Living with these two weirds is quite an interesting journey even if it has caused early greying.... though this greying started as early as at age 16. My sixteen has not been so sweet either but I always had wonderful people around to keep me going and this lady does not take much time to eliminate people from her life who she does not like. Take it as my negativity or what I cannot rub shoulder with people who intentionally puts me down. My note to the beautiful people around me.... do not leave a single chance to show your power or ignore people who took it on you once.... purposefully... in full consciousness .... I feel no guilt in doing so because I take too much care of people who mean.

Unlike my men, I always believe and say there is an Almighty who takes note of everything. Remember one thing... how much of a tiger your man is.... they are unlikely to mingle with people who the wifey dispels from life for genuine reasons. I tell him these are the people I do not wish to be in my life, but you can go ahead. He laughs out loud at the phrase 'you can go ahead' and says when a wife says this it only means if you do so, I will turn this home into hell.... hahaha ..... I do not mix with people to get some benefits from them, hence I keep the best ones in the circle because friendship has a different meaning to me. Then there is certain kind of equation between couples that keeps us going for 15-20-25-40-45 years under one roof even if we have major differences of opinion. So far broken homes are concerned, one cannot be an angel and the other devil. There are faults on both sides .... more in one or less in the other. In most occassions we fail to see our own faults.

Coming to my favourite subject food, I am more into this kind of smart platters may be a fried rice or stuffed poori / paratha served with meat curries, fish, dum aloo or so. When I cook typical Bengali style vegetables I have to pack it for my friends too or call them home. The senior may have a bit of panchmeshali tarkari or chanchra or shaak, the junior will not allow them on his plate. What else a mom can do but to cook what her lifeline loves? Even my craze for typical Bengali fresh water fish has lessened. The frozen ones we get in the Asian stores here are not up to my level of satisfaction, I hear they are of better quality in other foreign countries. If you can adapt to sea fish, this island is the best place to be, I could not as yet. So our fish fair is limited to salmon.... the only sea water fish I love, pomfret that my men love, prawns[we call fish haha], Bengal Carp, Ilish and yeah very recently I discovered one shop in Tekka market selling 'jeol magur'.... live cat fish dancing in water. I wish to share a recipe soon, my dear friend Chandrayee wished so. On this visit to Kolkata, I told my mother 'amai choto mach khaoabey'.... feed me my favourite small variety of fish.. charapona, puti, kajoli, tyangra, pabda, choto rui-katla..... I am not translating them because I know my readers are not interested in Bengali Fish Curries from me.... but if you ask my wish, I will blog on each one of my family favourite fish preparations before I quit blogging even if there is not a single reader for it.

The mother fed me my favourites and also told me the stories she heard from her mother-in-law.... how much my dad loved 'tyangra mach' as a young boy who back from school would run to the football ground without eating..... the mother had to allure him saying.... 'tyangra massss diya bhaat khaiya jsa'....that is a Bangladeshi provincial accent meaning there is your favourite tyangra mach cooked today, have it with some rice and go. Do not question my flair for that, I can speak it well, though you should not expect me to decipher the Chittagong language... it is near impossible if you are not particularly from there, they are more near to Burma. Anyway, I could not tell my mother I hear a similar story from another mother... I wonder how can there be such similarities and then the immediate reaction.... damn it... why do I have to bother, my dad is gone and the rest does not concern me. My baked / grilled fish loving son will not eat a single 'tyangra'.... is there an ache inside?.... yes for various reason taken together. So it is better to cook what makes my loves to eat double servings than on a normal rice day..... this time a green pea and pineapple rice done with very few ingredients. You can serve it with some grilled fish, eggplant or aloo masala, meat curries... if your men are not as naughty as mine you can also serve this freshly made carrot n tomato salad with it. Come let us prepare it together. I will not claim authenticity of the Pineapple Rice as I do not use fish sauce.

INGREDIENTS :[for the rice]Long Grain Rice : 1 coffee mug [I prefer Basmati]Green Pea : 1/2small cupPineapple[chopped] : 1 small cupOnion[sliced] : 1mediumGarlic[minced] : 1tbspSoya Sauce : 2-3tbspBlack Pepper Powder : 1tsp [coarsely ground]Salt : As RequiredOil : 2tbsp [we can use sesame oil too]INGREDIENTS : [for the salad]Carrot : 1mediumTomato : 1mediumCoriander Leaves[chopped] : 2tbspGreen Chilli[chopped] : 1-2Olive Oil : 1tspLemon Juice : 2tbspYou can add other veggies too but I had only these on that dayMETHOD :
Take the rice on a bowl and wash 3-4 times. Soak for 1/2 an hour. Take enough water in a heavy bottomed vessel and put for boil. As the water comes to boil, drain the water from rice and add to the boiling water gently. Cook till 60% done and discard all the water.

Spread the rice on a big plate and allow it to cool. Heat oil in a pan. Add the minced garlic and saute till we get that nice aroma.

Add the sliced onion and saute till translucent. Add the green pea, increase heat and give a quick stir. Add the chopped pineapple pieces, black pepper and little salt. Stir at high heat for a moment.

Add the cooked rice and soya sauce, fold in well. Stir gently at high heat for a minute or so. Do not allow the rice grains to break.

Transfer to a serving plate.

For the salad wash and chop the carrot, tomato [discard the seeds], coriander leaves and green chillies. Add the lemon juice, olive oil and coarsely ground fresh black pepper powder. Fold in well and serve with the Matar Pineapple Rice. You can also have this meal with a pickle of your choice.

4 comments
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That's the struggle we all have to go through having to feed veggies to people whose love for veggies is as distant as the earth is from pluto. My mother whenever she comes to visit me says the fish that we get here are neither tasty nor fresh. She like you is far away from eating sea fish. Mr. S loves Salmon and that is cooked mostly. Coming back to the dish, looks so yum. The flavours of pineapple, slightly sweet, tangy would surely have gives beautiful flavours to the dish. Yum yum.

Thanks so much Piyali... yes I agree with kakima that the frozen ones have no taste however nicely we cook. I am into maa kakima when it comes to sea fish... hihi... what I do is get fillets or at times batang steaks and marinate for 1-2 hours... this helps the smell to go... and them use a yum spice mix as coating and shallow fry dusting some besan or maida..... tell this to kakima..

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About Me

Cooking is a passion for me.I think I am yet to learn a lot in this area. I believe we should always pursue our passion, irrespective whether we have expertise in that arena or not.Life to me is being positive. Music is the fodder to my soul. I love to read and travel. Love being amidst nature, enjoy its serenity.